I want to share about an article entitled “Blogging for ELT (English Language Teaching)”. This article is sharing about an overview of blogging websites which are becoming increasingly popular as a language learning tool. It suggests why you might want to use them, and gives some practical advice on setting up blogs for use with your own classes. This article is very useful for English teacher who wants to use blogging for language teaching.
I will share some of the contents of the article. Check it out !
A blog (short for weblog) is a frequently updated website that often resembles an online journal. It's so easy to create and update a blog - it requires only basic access to the Internet, and a minimum of technical know-how. Because of this, it is one of the easiest ways to publish student writing on the WWW.
Aaron Campbell (2003) has outlined three types of blogs for use with language classes:
• The Tutor Blog
• The Class Blog
• The Learner Blog
c. Why blog?
There are many reasons why you may choose to use weblogs with students. One of the best reasons is to provide a real audience for student writing. Here are some other reasons for using blogs:
• To provide extra reading practice for students.
• As online student learner journals that can be read by their peers.
• To guide students to online resources appropriate for their level.
• To increase the sense of community in the class.
• To encourage shy students to participate.
• To stimulate out-of-class discussion.
• To encourage a process-writing approach.
• As an online portfolio of student written work.
• To help build a closer relationship between students in large classes.
d. Where to start
There are lots of sites where you can set up a blog for free, but perhaps the best known and one of the most reliable and simple blogging tools to use with students is Blogger http://blogger.com.
e. Tips for managing learner blog settings
• Use the 'Settings' in Blogger to add yourself (under Members) as Administrator of the learner blog. This is invaluable if students later forget usernames or passwords, and can also help if inappropriate posts are published.
• Make sure you change the setting and turn the 'Comments' feature on. This will allow the others to respond to things the students write on their learner blogs.
• Also in 'Settings', you will find an option to receive an email whenever a student publishes their blog. This will save you time regularly checking learner blogs to see if any of your students have posted. Another way of being informed of this is to use the 'Site Feed' function (discussed further below).
f. Keeping students interested
Here are some ideas to how this can be done:
• Respond to student posts quickly
• Students should be actively encouraged to read and respond to their classmates.
• Writing to the blog could be required, and it may form part of the class assessment.
g. Some ideas for activities
• Mystery guest.
• Project work.
• International link-ups.
• Photoblog.
h. Pitfalls to watch out for
• Unwanted comments
• Correction
• Privacy
i. Advanced feature
The easiest way to keep track of a lot of learner blogs is to use the 'Site Feed' feature. You will need to use another piece of software called a newsreader or aggregator to read site feeds. Using a newsreader means your e-mail in-box won't become cluttered with posted messages from students publishing their weblogs. One of the most popular, free web-based newsreaders is Bloglines
http://www.bloglines.com.
You can read more in
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/blogging-elt
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